Big Changes In Magic: The Gathering

With the new Magic: the Gathering block beginning with Shards of Alara on October 3rd, 2008, the folks at Wizards have announced a few changes that will be a comin'.

• After a "tremendous amount of feedback," they have decided that they are releasing too many cards each year and card sets will be smaller. Shards of Alara will have 249 cards, and each of the next two sets in the block will have 145.

• The concept of rarity is also changing with the institution of the new level of rarity--the mythic rare, with not a gold expansion symbol but kind of a fiery red-orange expansion symbol. Intense indeed, these babies will replace the rare in about 1 out of 8 booster packs. Shards of Alara will have 15 mythic rares, 53 rares, 60 uncommons, 101 commons and 20 basic lands. The next two sets will have 10 mythic rares, 35 rares, 40 uncommons and 60 commons. The way foils work will stay the same, with foil mythic rares actually being more frequent than usual.

• Boosters will have 1 common card replaced with a basic land. Boosters will therefore consist of 1 rare (or mythic rare), 3 uncommons, 10 commons, 1 basic land, and 1 tip card or token.

• A new product is being introduced, the intro pack, acting as an experienced player's introduction to the new set's mechanics and setting (as opposed to, like, the internet), and will be the "best tool for introducing new players into the game." It'll include a 41-card precon deck with 1 premium foil rare and 1 non-foil rare, a booster pack of the current set, an insert with the new set's mechanics and info on the precon deck, and an insert to teach newbies how to play the game. There'll be 5 intro packs with each set, and SRP is $12.29. Theme decks, however, will be discontinued.

• Coming up in the fall is the Planeswalker's Guide, an extensive book about the new set--this one in particular is called The Planeswalker's Guide to Alara, coming out September 2nd, 2008. In the winter will be a new Planeswalker novel series, in the Spring the new block will get its own set, and the Fat Packs are getting a redesign with 6 instead of 8 boosters and a current novel instead of a set-based novel (boo! Boo!).

The week's articles at Magicthegathering.com will be dedicated to those changes. The first article is The Year of Living Changerously, in which Mark Rosewater begins to explain what went through WotC's heads. (Myself, I think most of the changes are pretty cool, besides the reduced set sizes. I mean, 330 cards in Mirage meant that there were that many more cards to love!)